this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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You don't have libraries in the schools there in the USA? (It is a question, not sarcasm or something)
Not for textbooks...
Like, if your curious there's a bunch of info out there about why the situation is so fucked.
But in general they release new editions almost every year, with the same information just shuffled so page numbers are different. Even really petty stuff like keeping the same practice work, but changing the order of answers so you need the most updated book every year.
Oh, fuck... I see. My condolences.
And a lot of professors write their own text book.
At least those professors seem to either price their books reasonably or readily pirate it themselves to distribute.
Probably once they realize how little they get compared to the book price.
the good ones ensure older verisons are still valid for their course work and only do annual editions because they're contractually obligated by their publisher.
The cool professors used to make a "study guide" especially if it was their own book that they'd give out for free and told everyone to return the books
It's been a minute, so not sure if it's a thing still.
But yeah. Unregulated capitalism pretty much always ends this way.
You have to buy the book, so they pump out new editions constantly and charge insane prices. It's a captive market
My univeristy library would often have one or two copies of the current textbook on course reserve in the library. This meant that 1) you had to know where the course reserves were, 2) hope you could get it before one of the other 100-150 students also taking that course got it first, and 3) hope some dickhead didn’t just take it off the shelf and hide it in their study carrel or in a quiet corner of the library. Number 3 gets worse the higher the level of degree you are studying.
My library, you have to check out books on reserve from the circulation desk. They're for in-library use only, 3 or 6 hours at a time, and if you take it into a study room and scan the whole thing with your phone we saw nothing.
We don't like the constant churn of textbooks, either. They eat into our budget. We really appreciate when a professor lends us their personal copies of a textbook for us to keep on reserve. We also try and steer instructions to Open Educational Resources (OER), which are available for free.
Wealth disparity sucks and shouldn't result in different access to education.
Or rip out some of the pages to fuck everybody else over.
We do. The issue is at the college/university level, most courses require specific edition textbooks (they update them every 1-2 years) that the professors assign homework questions out of. You'll be lucky if the school library has a copy more recent than the last 8 years.
Then on top of that, many professors will also use digital 3rd party homework services that are tied to a textbook access code that you only get with a new copy. So unless you pay up you can't do homework and fail the class.
The whole system is fucking bullshit
My university (well, typically the professor) usually made sure there was at least one copy of the current course's text book in the library. Yes, that means there was exactly one copy available for us poor students to share. At least it was put on the "reference" list so no one could take it home - just study it in the library and then put it back on the shelf. I don't know if that's possible now that they are going to digital editions.